Demographic data was gathered concerning gender, years since medical school graduation, practice location, practice type, and practice specialty.
No significant differences were found in provider characteristics (location, practice type, and number of deliveries performed) from 1998 to 2002.
* Adjusted for physician sex, physician age, nurse availability, practice location, practice size, years in practice, and number of patients seen per week.
Structural characteristics of practices include practice location, practice type, consultation patterns, gender, and the number of years since graduation as a proxy for physicians' experience.
Information was limited about the hospital level and location practiced, that is, misclassification of the region of practice without differentiating primary/referral hospital and urban/rural setting.
However, our sampling strategy was successful in recruiting physicians who varied in terms of age, gender, practice location, practice ownership, and experience and training in pain care.
Linking the prescription data to location, practice geodemographics and health statistics provides a useful tool for studying health trends and for routine surveillance.
No differences were found in the number of different tasks performed by gender, geographic location, practice type, contract type or weekly workload (table 8).
The questionnaire included questions on practice characteristics (practice location, practice size, employment of practice nurses), the use of written preventive care protocols and linkages between the practice and support services [ 10].
Bivariate analysis identified seven variables (sex, age, availability of a nurse, practice location, practice size, years in practice, and number of patients seen per week) that were significantly associated with the use of chaperones.
